


the moon was beautiful, once

by yuushi



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: "come down from the mountain" he said, "it will be fun" he said, AU, Amputation, Character Death, Gen, Things that seemed like a good idea at the time, Zombie Apocalypse, cw: shitnaro, technicolor zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuushi/pseuds/yuushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a quiet winter morning, society let itself slip away, and left the children behind. For some it's a matter of surviving til summer, and for others, it's a matter of remembering that morning, when the moon still shone. Zombie apocalypse AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the moon was beautiful, once

In the midst of a  cold winter morning fogged by a thick and quiet mist, the stars had shone gently on travelers below. It's far too early for anyone to ever be up, she'd thought to herself then, and yet, bound tightly in layers of coat and scarf, Takane had stopped, only that one morning. Hands shoved deep into her pockets, bitten pink like her cheeks by the cold, and her music player silent as it buffered, she gazed at the stars that glowed against the haze of morning, the depth of the night abating, and the sun dawning in the east.

Their morning instruction had been self-study, and without Kenjirou's theatrics, they had grown sluggish, Takane and Haruka both quieter than usual. He looked uncomfortable in his own skin, and instead of pulling out his sketchpad or notes, he tugged at his sleeves with absent eyes. Even still,  in Takane's  half-turned eyes, that morning he looked especially beautiful.

Are you sick, or what? She'd said many times, tone prickly, but face concerned. Every time, he shook his head. Nothing; I'm just hungry. That's all.

They hadn't lasted the morning. "Takane, I'm sorry," he'd said. She remembered as she fell backward, boy of her dreams on top of her, that the sky through the window was still a deep blue, and the day had not yet scared away the echo of the moon in the sky. But even that blurs as he bites crescents into her cheeks, and her eyes feel hot.

 

"--Get away from the railing," is the fastest thing Shintaro can spit out from the outside of the door's roof, shoving every heavyweight object he can against its clattering. But he's only half attentive, face turned full towards Ayano, who only shakes her head.

"I've been bit. It can't be helped," she replies sadly. Despite Shintaro's warnings, her palms nurse the bite at her stomach, her fingers now sinewy and red, muscle showing through skin. She hadn't looked at her stomach since she was bitten, but she felt sore from her hips to her neck now, so she'd tied her scarf tight.

Shintaro repeats her name, he repeats it over and over, and maybe he says other things, too, but her feet are the most interesting thing in the world right now as she leans back over the railing. How many peers she'd kicked and run over, she wondered; how very unheroic it had been, to get their blood and skin on her shoes.

"Listen," he pleads, a mixture between aloof and desperate: could he be dependable and human? She'd tried to tell him many times, but he never would listen. And now, he expected her to listen to him. How very like Shintaro.

Yet, despite all his attempted pretense, he'd abandoned the door to close the distance between them. She can hear the creaking of hinges breaking slowly, and the slow grind of Shintaro's blockage pushed away, and how much all of this causes him to shake; but in that moment, with the winter sun's chill on her back, and the sound of weeping and hunger below, her hair blows in the wind blows quietly, and she feels nothing but pride for him.  She smiles, but that encourages him.

He reaches out to take her hand, and with so much force and urgency in his clumsy grip she loses her balance, and falls.

 

In the cramped confines of a laboratory lit only by the ill green light of computer screens, Kenjirou leans back in his chair and stretches his arms, the very picture of excitement. He'd worked so long, and things had gone so well. He could hardly keep track of every camera feed across every monitor, and he flipped through them rapidly, taking notes with one hand, and cross-checking the data in his head. He was certain hadn't made any miscalculations; he hadn't been careless. He couldn't be afford to be careless now, when there was so much to lose.

"It's nearly noon now; several hours since the infection's incubation period ended," he speaks loudly and purposefully, eyes still darting between the screens and his notes, "and when it first spread. And things are going even faster than I thought; look, here--"

He points to a high monitor with the worn eraser of his pencil, eyes gleaming brightly. "Zero here, he had even better compatibility with the virus than I'd thought. By my calculations, the virus would've caused his already-ruined immune system to shut down entirely, maybe even self-destruct, leaving him dead in maybe an hour or two, depending on what was in the air. But that chance, that 0.0000001% chance--"

He sighs with exhilaration only another scientist could understand, that his years of research had finally paid off and given him results contrary to the odds. Everyone wants contrary results, but not everyone can get them. Whether it be by luck or his own skill, for once, he has no gods to curse.

"Of course, it's not like we're in the clear yet," he muses thoughtfully, not at all disheartened. "But if a single mutation is possible -- a single mutation in no more than a few hours! -- then more are even likelier. I won't try to guess how long it might take without running a few more numbers, but, you know." He laughs, and falls quiet for a time, and scratches the back of his head.

"I know you said I can be a pretty unreliable guy, but as a scientist, you know me better than anyone else." Bashfully  boyish, he ducks his head against his chest to hide his flushed face, as though he weren't thrice the age when he might've been young enough to get away with it. But he doesn't hide the grin stretched wide over his face, sweeping his gaze over the biological department freezer door, large enough, maybe, to be its own apartment suite. "So don't worry about it, Ayaka. After this, we can head somewhere nice with Ayano, and we can find those other three kids, if you want. It'll be fun, I promise."

 

I don't want to die, Ayano had thought, and the railing grew further and further.

 

Mary wrings her hands uncomfortably and tries to ward off the cold with movement. Periodically, her eyes flick to the boy she doesn't know, unashamed of the unease in her expression. He'd been kind enough for a stranger she had reasoned, a conclusion she had reached after several dozen minutes of standing frozen in terror. In the moment she'd been separated from the boy she did know, she'd been cornered by a mob with hungry grins stretched thin over their teeth, and picked up and sped off in this boy's arms, far from harm. She had been thankful, but dubious of his method.

Still, though he remains watchful and reliable, metal pipe in hand, he seems, to Mary, unreadable, and she doesn't huddle close to him behind the gas station store counter. She makes herself as small from the world as possible, and tries to recall how the forest might sound through her window this time of day. The noon air is still crisp, and if she doesn't keep her fingers close to her, she worries they might fall off in the cold. She tries with all her might to hear the quiet murmurs of the forest, but outside cries rebound off the thick, overcast skies, and carry themselves back to her, so she draws her hands even closer to her breast.

They haven't spoken a word. She counts first the tiles on the floor, then the number of shivers that run along the boy's hand, and make the pipe slip in his unsteady grip. He might be gentle in normal circumstance, but, though she had no room to judge, against the dull white sky, his ashen skin and pale white hair seemed unsettling, without expression to grant them vibrancy. But that she preferred, to the ones that roamed outside. They had looked so bright, and so human.

Her gaze trails up, and she finds that as she'd been looking at him, his gaze had shifted to her. The irises of his eyes remain murky, and with them focused on her she feels uncomfortable to the point of speaking. "Um, are you hungry?" Is all she can tentatively manage, attention caught by how he wets his lips.

 

"That's the thing," Kenjirou answers the freezer door as he leafs through his notes, one page at a time. "The virus seems almost protective of its host and likes to boost their immune systems, which is why its original hosts -- the ones I ripped the DNA from -- lived for such a long time, that I thought my measurements had been wrong at first.

"And it works. They can live as long as they get a certain kind of meat. Unlike these alphas here," he waves a hand dismissively at some monitors, "who can keep going as long as they get anything -- their bodies are far weaker. The original index case probably picked whoever was closest to her, but the rest of them -- these beta types had to eat the ones who originally carried the genes of the virus, their predecessors, or they died off.

"In this case, though, the chances of him finding someone from that heritage is close to none. Even I couldn't find them.

"Chances are, though," he twirls his pencil in his fingers with practiced precision, but excitement seeps into his voice: "the virus will find that limitation too impractical. It'll evolve again, from alpha to our mutant beta here, to maybe even a gamma, who won't need meat to survive."

And it was only natural to have as many subjects as possible, Kenjirou adds for little reason at all, to force the virus into a Darwinian sink or swim situation. Evolution never happens without necessity, after all.

 

Shintaro had jumped. Whether it was out of desperation or fear, or guilt especially, or if he thought maybe he could save her, or that, like a child, he hadn't wanted to be left alone, he had chased the teardrops that had trailed after her.

For his efforts, he's rewarded with an, "Are you an _idiot_?!" cried at him from within a classroom, the window of which opened for the express purpose of catching him by the collar, before he could hit the ground. Before he can protest or perhaps enjoy the view, he was sure is so full of symbolism and gore that it was worth searing into his retinas before he died, he finds himself hurled back up and into the classroom, crashing loudly into several desks, the only miracle that he stopped just short of the wall.

The culprit doesn't seem to care that she's caused him more than double the amount of bruises any of their infected peers had caused him, and continues her abusive interrogation. He nearly talks back, or lashes out, or snarls that she couldn't possibly understand and how dare she, but he stops, in that moment stunned.

" _Enomoto_?" A question, because as recognizable her face she looks as vibrant and full of vim and vigor as he had ever seen her, and the last time he had seen such colorful bounce in a person was maybe ten minutes ago, in the classmate whose eye he'd rammed a chair leg into before she tried to make a meal out of him.

"Yeah, something like that," she answers vaguely, rubbing a cheek with her palm. But soon enough she recovers, and she snaps her head around toward him, taking no heed at Shintaro gripping a chair leg. "Honestly! You're a bigger idiot than I thought. I knew you were the gloomy type, but I didn't think you were the type to jump."

He scoffs openly, and tries to push himself up without flinching at his bruises. "You're peppier than usual, huh. Instead of bitching, why don't you give me a reason why I shouldn't kill you?"

"Ah! So there's your fighting spirit! Good job, Kisaragi!" She claps her hands, the very picture of mocking, and only winks when Shintaro grits his teeth. "You could try, but I'm pretty sure that'd be an instant GAME OVER for you. Of course," her eyelids droop to complement her wry grin, "maybe that's what you want?"

"Shut up," he hisses, the chair held between them, but no energy in his limbs to swing it, or say much else.

"Nope! Anyway, we better get out of here. We can't stay here forever, and from the looks of it," she turns, picking up a bloodied metal pole she dislocated from the rest of the broom, and eyes the chair in Shintaro's hands pointedly, "you want to survive, yes? So follow me."

He looks at her, no word falling from his lips for a long time. And finally, it becomes too hard to hold up the chair, and too hard to keep himself standing. His back his the wall behind him with a thud, and it's all he can do to keep himself from falling. Shit, shit. His exhales are shaky; but maybe, it's because it's his body that's shaking, or everything around him. Shit.

Takane is quiet, this time, and she lets him breathe.

Finally, he murmurs, only just loud enough that Takane can here. We need to get Ayano, he manages.

"Ayano-chan?" She nearly speaks again, but her words catch in her throat, and her eyes widen. "Don't tell me--"

"Yeah," he exhales quietly. "Yeah."

 

"I've been bit. It can't really be helped." Kano's usual grin plays on his face; reassurance that they, too, should see this as nothing to worry over. "So just--"

"Kano, shut _up_." He's certain there must be some kind of unwritten rule that the sick shouldn't be injured further, especially physically, especially by agitated family, both of whom seemed nearly on the verge of tears, but Kido was having none of it. He should have been more careful, he tells himself. He should have been better. He combs through his mind for an escape route, even if only a verbal one, and tries, for the first time, to feign that Kido's punch didn't hurt far more than it normally might.

"Sorry, Kano, but this time I have to agree with Kido," Seto remarks without an ounce of apology, arranging some bottles, bandages, and knives. "Kido, could you hold him down for the whole thing?"

"You're kidding," Kano argues in disbelief. He doesn't resist Kido's hand pressing down on his chest, forcing him to lie down, or holding out his reddened arm. "You can barely cut meat without looking sappy."

Even in the dim afternoon light against Seto's back, Kano can see him falter as he brushes his hair out of his eyes. The liquor store's lights had long since gone dark after the electrical failure, and it left the air dusty, with broken shelves fallen in disarray, casting shadow on shadow, so impenetrable the afternoon's falling sun reflected no light on them.

But maybe that was better for them, to hide in the cover of darkness. They couldn't tell how those things could track them, but Kido had kept them safe in the shadows. That's all. But those shadows that had granted them safety before seemed so heavy now on Kido and Seto's backs, from Kano's view from the ground.

"Kido might faint at the blood," is all Seto could offer with a half smile, expression apologetic. The sincerity in his voice wouldn't piss a better man off; fortunately, Kano prides himself on being as low as any creature can go. He sneers unrepentantly. It would have been easier if they had let him sneak off earlier, before they'd ever known he was injured.

"And if it doesn't work?" He begins, his voice high-spirited still. "When you guys are all tired out, and I'm still infected. It'd make things pretty easy for me, with how sentimental you are. The ones out there were sentient enough; they might've even wanted to talk a little. Kido might not believe it, but I bet I'd have enough brains to recognize an easy meal."

"If you have enough brains to recognize anything," Kido scowls, shoving a bottle of liquor into his free hand, their anesthetic, as Seto ties off the other arm, "then remember who we are. It's gonna be fine, so drink at least half of that -- whatever kind, half should probably be enough to get you drunk."

He begins again, but Seto and Kido make a better team than he expects, and by the end of it he's sullenly gulping down the bottle, treading the fine line between drunkenness and alcohol poisoning without care. Idly, he flexes his hand, all pins and needles, in his haze trying to make good on the time he had left with it. At first it'd just been his fingers, but in the half hour it took for them to get to the store it'd already made it to his elbow, and even now it was probably still spreading.

"It's probably even higher now," he murmurs, uncomfortably loose-lipped and face flushed, but grinning so close to genuine. "Better take the whole thing off. But you can't tie off a shoulder, huh."

"Shut up, Kano," Kido mutters, chin tucked against her chest, but her words lack bite.

"Roger," he answers, like he always would to badger her. He wriggles when he feels something press against? into? on? beside? his arm, and Kido holds him still. He can't focus his vision on Seto long enough to see what he's doing now, so he gives up, head lolling back. He stays quiet, for a time, and his eyes close.

"Hey," he says softly. "Let me tell you a story."

 

Hibiya hadn't meant to keep her waiting, but even as she scolded him for taking too long to get ice cream, he wasn't nearly as apologetic as he acted. He'd shuffled in place and offered her cone, with a grin that said her scolding him was an honor. Ah, you're so nasty, she sighed as she rocked on her swing, and doesn't tell him not to sit next to her.

That time, just that one time, he shouldn't have been late. "You're way too slow," she snaps at him, and on the evening of the first day of their early winter vacation, Hiyori shoves Hibiya, dumb, paralyzed Hibiya, into a bush, out of sight. He can hear it before he sees anything: her slender arms twisted in another person's grip, and the cracking that echoes into the endless evening sky, the pale clouds melting into night, and the sunset stained only by blood torn from her small body, so dark against the brilliance of white teeth turned red. That could have been him, a bruise against the sun.

He regains himself, just for that moment, and tears her away from them, and runs. If he hadn't been late that day, they could've spent more time together, and gone somewhere safer, where nothing could find them, before any of this. They could have run farther, and gotten a better head start; it wouldn't have mattered that Hibiya trips because Hiyori can barely pull her own weight on bitten legs, and they would have had time to get up and run again.

"Honestly," is all she mutters, the same way she had when she'd waited extra for ice cream, and heaves herself on top of him, before the rest arrive.

 

Momo knew she'd been brave before; she had felt proud that at least she'd saved one person, despite her bad luck. But now, on a riverbank under a bridge, her hands shook, and she can't reload the gun. Embarrassment burns her cheeks, and she tries to place a bullet inside with even more force: it slips, and rolls toward the water.

Before Momo so much as gasps, a hand reaches out to snatch the bullet first, the rest of the small figure nearly tumbling after it, but Momo catches her this time, and pulls Mary back against the concrete support. Momo's Careful! and Mary's stammered thank you intermingle, and in the moments after they fall awkwardly silent, neither making eye contact. Finally, Mary holds out the bullet shyly. "Here." Momo takes it with thanks.

"I don't normally use guns," Momo interjects quickly, though Mary hadn't said anything. "I just happened to be at the station -- um, a police one, if you know those -- and this all happened, so just based off what I've seen..." She trails off, feeling it not appropriate to mention her experience is limited to how video game characters reload guns in games she's only watched secondhand. Mary only nods slowly, clearly perplexed but accepting. The river lapped against the bank, muffled by the heavy night that had slowly lay itself on the land.

Momo's hands don't move; holding this left a bitter taste in her mouth, but it's necessary, she argues with herself. She remains still, worrying her lip, until Mary tentatively places her small fingers on her wrists, so cool against Momo. "If you're having trouble, then, maybe," she stumbles over her words several times before managing the rest, "like this, if you're not alone, it should be okay. It's a little hard to see in the dark, and..."

A beat. "Thank you for earlier," she says softly, ducking her head. A moment passes before the words really register, and Momo smiles, bright as she can manage in the shadow of the bridge. Yeah, she says. Yeah. Any time, Mary.

 

Kano's tale was a pleasant one, and he spoke of the time after they left the store, when they'd go to find Aya-nee. She's always been clever, Kano had reasoned with slurred speech; she'd hide somewhere hard to find, but safe. They would find her, and hide somewhere like a mall, with a lot of food and supplies, and wait it out. Things like this wouldn't stay, he said. Nothing lasts forever.

He'd finally fallen asleep near the end, and when Seto had finally made sure Kano wasn't likely to die of blood loss, he volunteered to keep watch as she and Kano slept, and she refuses.

The exhaustion is heavy in his bones, and he looked duller than she'd ever seen him; but it wasn't a bad sign, because it meant he was healthy, just tired. She says she'll wake them in the morning, and that they won't be found. She insists, and he can't say a word to it.

As they sleep, she sits with her legs tucked under her, and brushes the hair out of both their faces, mouth thinned into a tight line. In the morning, she would wake them, but there were so many hours still until morning; the sun had only just set, and the night's chill was at her back.

Slowly, her fingers wander from Kano's face to what remained of his arm, and hesitate. She bites her lip, and then again harder, before peeling back his sleeve to see the redness underneath. Since she last saw it, just at the very end of the operation, it'd spread from the very edge of stump and even higher, and probably, until morning, even higher still. She had pursed her lips the first time, and sworn it was the bad lighting; and she purses her lips now, hair falling over her cheeks, and tangling over her face.

In the morning, she'd have to tell Seto. If Kano lasted until morning, she promised she would tell him, too.

"I'm sorry," spills from her mouth, her cheeks hot with tears. "I'm really, really sorry."

 

Ayano's body wasn't there.

They'd checked first from the second floor, the east wing that hung over the school courtyard, where she should've been. They saw blood splattered, and Shintaro said with the thick gulp that, from the looks of it, that's how the splatter should look, for someone who'd come in from the roof. Takane notes he doesn't say the word "fall," but her lips stay shut.

"Then why don't we get a little closer?"

It's stupid, this is stupid, she argues with herself as they run through the halls infested with their peers. The best way to kill them is to crush something vital, and, especially on the move, that in itself is a chore: no matter how familiar she was with the fragility of the human body, she found it annoyingly resistant to murder. It would be better not to think of them as humans, but she had no choice. Minutes turn to hours in the time it takes for them to scrape through alive, and several times they'd needed to stop to treat wounds, and eat.

She knows this isn't stupid, because she's still inside the school, looking for Haruka.

"Oi, Enomoto."

She turns in time to see Shintaro stomping down on a boy's neck, but Shintaro's attention is toward the windows, though now it was too dark to see the school courtyard. Shintaro never bothers look at their faces, but Takane does. She finds the broken, iron chair leg in his hand unbearably cruel, but he argued it's better for getting to the brain through the sockets. It was more logical, and faster.

She sucks in a breath. "What?"

"Haven't you noticed something weird?" His gaze flicks back to her, briefly. "Don't bother answering. We haven't seen any teachers, right? Just corpses, but none of them have been our attackers."

She follows his gaze, forcing biting back her tongue just this once so she can rack her brains for everyone they've encountered. They'd been around the school several times, trying for ways to get to the front, and every round they were met with more students, but never teachers. In the moonless dark the scars on her cheeks feel sore, and the chill digs deep into her skin; she shivers, but finally acquiesces to Shintaro's observation. "The number of students hasn't gone down, either," she states, that observation her own.

"That's what I thought."

"Then? If Kisaragi-san's already noticed _so_ much, what does he make of it, hm?"

"Oh, shut up. It's either that this," he taps the chin of the dead boy with the back of his heel, "doesn't kill them, or the students that got killed before they were bit are getting infected later, too."

"Wait," she interrupts before he can finish. "If corpses can get infected even after they die, and these don't _stay_ dead, then--"

"It's equivalent to having an infinite amount, obviously," he answers simply, as though it were a matter irrelevant to him. "And if it affects everyone but adults, they're the only ones in real danger. For the rest of us, it's pretty much a free ticket to living forever, right?"

"--You're kidding."

 

"I'm not." A slight grin curls his lips, eyebrows arched in; the stars color his face with an unpleasant light. And yet, she can see the morning in his eyes. "I mean, it's not like I know if my theory's totally correct. I don't have any proof yet. But, I've noticed something."

He turns toward her fully, the shadows overwhelming his figure as he steps forward. Takane stands her ground.

"Takane, you've shrugged off some pretty lethal blows, right? Even when your neck was crushed, you didn't falter. I suspected you were like them, but, lack of typical weaknesses aside, you've never acted hungry, and your sentience is greater than theirs."

"Just get to the point already, Shintaro."

"I'm just saying you should explain it to me. You must be pretty tired by now, right? I just want to talk."

"Hoooh, so my high and mighty kouhai wants to chat with little old me? How sweet," she remarks, voice dripping with acerbity. "In the end, it all comes back to Ayano-chan, right? That's the only reason you want to know. So you can ensure she ends up like me?"

The darkness veils his expression, but the glass that crunches under his shoe grants her certainty. Her stance drops, better-suited for defending, eyes darting about in the dark. There isn't a doubt in her mind that he planned this: the timing, the location, and her physical state. She could sense him better, but he was sure to have a plan.

"She's already dead, Shintaro," she says gently, far softer than even she expected.

The hallway holds its breath, the air stale with dust and broken glass, and the smell of blood and sickness grown accustomed to flowing in and out of their lungs. She sees the glint of his chair leg before she hears it.

The window shatters and he lunges for her; she dodges quickly to the right, but iron cracks against her leg and she's thrown to the wall from her flight, hissing furiously, shoulders hunched, at the sudden burning sensation in her leg. But she forces herself to open her eyes to seek Shintaro -- and finds him standing over her, the jagged part of the chair leg raised above her.

"I already know how you move, Enomoto," and he swings it down.

 

Someone, please save Hiyori.

In that moment, engulfed by the dark, his body heavy with water, Hibiya cries. He cries loudly, that maybe he would be heard. By god or the devil, or someone come to eat him alive, it didn't matter; I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Hiyori. He curls his arms around her thin torso, and his tears tangle her dirtied hair. He apologizes for that, and he apologizes that everything from the waist down snapped off -- after it had been bitten so much, and he apologizes for that too -- and washed away in the river, and that he couldn't find any of it, even though he'd looked all day. He apologizes for holding her without permission. He apologizes for being slow.

No stars shine this late in the night, and the city had been dark since noon. His throat raw and his cheeks burnt cold, no wind blows on this street. There's only the midwinter air, and his skin numb against it.

He doesn't feel the warmth of anyone approaching, but in the blur of his tears he sees suddenly two bright yellow eyes, parallel his open. Below the eyes, a grin.

With sweet confection dripping from his tongue, he coaxes Hibiya with gracious sibilant, and Hibiya lets him; wide-eyed and gaze fixed, he listens to this stranger console him with a final chance at grace. I can help you, he says to Hibiya, if only you'll help me.

Hibiya wraps his arms tightly around Hiyori, and presses her to his chest. He swallows hard, but his voice doesn't shake. What do I get in return?

"Would you like me to save her?"

The air around them is even colder than the night and the river, and in that moment Hibiya is certain that if he were to touch this man's skin, it would be even colder still; but the starless night, and the city skyline that melts against it, are swallowed up in the empty street, leaving only his voice, and the man whose torso, riddled with bullet holes, Hibiya chooses not to see.

 

Only when it's nearly noon does the sun spill over the horizon with slow complacence, outshining the moon in the pale blue sky, its rays light the wispy clouds that linger still with rosy kisses on their cheeks, the air clear and calm. The cities along the slopes of the horizon are the first to wake, hungry children, drag themselves from slumber and shamble along the streets, lazy in the cold.

But the faint warmth of the sun on their faces is nothing to the will to sleep late, and despite the cold, and despite the waking world, Momo and Mary stay curled tight against each other in the receding shadow of the bridge. Neither the cool steel of the gun, nor the faint vibrations of a cellphone, was enough.

[ unknown sender ]

Momo-chan, are you there? I'm really worried; I think Takane-chan's phone's been disconnected.

But if you're there, please pick up soon. There's something I need help with.

If you could come to the biological department building, to the east of the school's main building, I would be grateful.

I'm all alone here . . .

Ah, you might not recognize this number. Sorry!

It's Ayano.

I'll be waiting, okay?


End file.
